CLEVELAND, Ohio -- In addition to writing this weekly gluten-free series, I'm on cleveland.com's "Best of" team, which finds the best in food, drinks, entertainment and more in the Greater Cleveland area. We conduct polls, that are voted on by readers, to crown area businesses as the best.

Last fall, to celebrate Gluten-Free Diet Awareness Month, we ran a contest to find the best gluten-free restaurant in Northeast Ohio. We took reader nominations, held an initial poll to determine the Top 5 and then took those five down to the ultimate winner in a final online poll.

A year later and all five establishments continue to offer up tasty gluten-free dishes. Read below for a description of each of these area restaurants (listed in alphabetical order), deemed as the Top 5 by readers: